With Kia Motors launching its maiden car Seltos in India on Thursday and taking the industry by surprise with its pricing, MG Motors has announced a rewards scheme for its customers who have booked the Hector SUV in an obvious attempt to keep them in their fold.

MG, which is backed by China's largest automotive company SAIC, launched the Hector on June 27 and received more than 28,000 bookings so far. The company has stopped accepting fresh bookings and despatched a little over 1500 units of the car to its dealerships. Hector is priced between Rs 12.18-16.88 lakh.

Under the rewards initiative, MG is offering its customers 1,000 points for every week that they are made to wait for the Hector. These points can be redeemed for the company's range of genuine accessories and/or prepaid maintenance packages while receiving delivery for the vehicle this year. The accessories are available across its 120 centers in India and come with a warranty of one year or 20,000 kilometres. Earlier the company had also tied up with IIMPACT NGO to educate one girl child on behalf of every customer who waits for two weeks for the car.

"As part of our commitment to customer satisfaction, our 'Worth Waiting For' programme has been further augmented with a unique rewards initiative," said Rajeev Chaba, President &amp; Managing Director, MG Motor India. "Apart from driving the cause of girl child education, the rewards initiative brings delight to our Hector customers as they take deliveries."

Kia Motors, which is owned by Hyundai and is South Korea's second largest car maker, entered the Indian market today with the Seltos and created a flutter with its aggressive pricing. With a starting price of Rs 9.7 lakh, the Seltos undercuts the Hector by over Rs 2 lakh. Seltos is expected to pose a stiff challenge to the Hector and could lure customers who are waiting for the latter. MG said the waiting period of their car stretched upto 6 months across variants.

"In a market that is in recession, no customer would want to wait for more than 2 months for a car unless it is a compelling product," said a car dealer in Delhi. "The industry expected Kia to price the car over Rs 11 lakh but they have surprised everybody. Hector has a stiff challenge on its hand."

The Seltos also has received a good response from the market and has racked up over 32,000 bookings since pre-orders were opened five weeks back. Kia has however said it would not stop bookings for the car and is instead working on ramping up production at its factory so that customers dont have to wait too long for the Seltos.

"We have already increased production of the Seltos at out factory and are now making 5,000 cars every month," said Manohar Bhatt, head sales and marketing, Kia Motors. "We will not stop accepting bookings at any point in time but will do everything possible to ensure customers will not have to wait too long for their car."